Some years ago in Philadelphia, center of the birth of America and its freedoms, I was shown a “safe house” for Catholics who came to these shores, during colonial times, when they were not welcome to do so. Seems liberty loving Protestants thought an influx of Roman Catholics to America would endanger the very freedoms the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, the spirit of religious freedom, and the right to have no religion, a right our nation was set up to protect and defend.
It was amazing. How, thought I, could our founders, who wanted religious freedom, possibly fear Catholics and want to exclude them from our shores?

It was feared, at that time, that, with a sufficient number of Catholics in place, the Roman Catholic Church could perhaps take over our government and take away the right of the people to choose which, if any, religion they wanted to follow, without interference by the powers of the state. This principal is known as “separation of church and state,” and is a basic tenet of our freedoms.

Rick Santorum may be unique among politicians for his forthright admission that he wants the United States to be run by his religion. Usually, they tap dance around their true intent. But not Rick. He doesn’t see us as a nation of laws; he sees us as a nation of sins.

And we now have priests and bishops of the Catholic Church telling people for whom, and for what, to vote.

Legislators who are members of the church are subjected to being condemned by the priests to eternal damnation unless the elected representatives vote as the church demands. How can this be seen as anything other than a criminal attempt to intimidate elected officials?

According to reports, the Catholic Church is getting tooled up for the American Religious Civil War (ARCW) by finding lawyers to argue that a takeover of the government by the church is not a violation of church/state separation.

While crying to keep big government out of our lives, the theocrats pass laws telling people what they can and cannot do with their sex organs, and who they can and cannot marry.

And, even more frightening, they tell our lawmakers that the rights of the unconceived need to be protected. And this, in their view, is morality.

In that this monograph is only humor and satire, as are any to follow, and in that everything said is my personal opinion, those who call atheists evil, deranged, depraved, and dangerous really have no cause to complain.

It is time to be afraid and it is time to do something while we still can.

It is my opinion that the church rulers really could not care less about the rights of a fetus or about who marries whom. What they appear to care about is power. Good old raw power. Banks, land, hotels and other buildings, gold, and cash.

Once they have taken over by getting laws passed making absurdities true and giving themselves complete power, they will no longer care what happens to the frozen embryos they were saving before those collections of cells became people by legal actions enforcing the Church’s understanding of divine decrees.

If the Catholic leadership wants to have input into laws, let them pay taxes like others not so blessed. Let them pay taxes on their real estate and on their gilded wealth.

Why should those who neither sow nor reap dine for free at the table reserved for “We the People?”

And if the Catholic Church has an embassy in our country and states that it is an independent country subject only to its own laws and rules, then why are its agents, the priests and bishops of the church, not subject to having to register as foreign lobbying agents attempting to influence our legislation?

And just why, pray tell, is it not treason to advocate ignoring our Constitution and laws to be able to do what one wants?

The answer appears to be that they can do it because they are the Church.

Time to straighten out some things.

Edwin Kagin
© 2012.